tuckova

to quote another famous czech, "you americans are so naive!" oh, i’m
kidding. it’s just been running through my head since i tried to explain the whole "oh the horrors of parents who drink" thing to Friar Tuck.

the beer garden, as i’m sure i’ve mentioned, is an outdoor pub with
tables that border a playground. parents sit and talk and drink and
smoke and relax. kids play and climb and run. it is understood that
parents are not there to play with their kids, but are immediately
available should a child need help. it is understood that most of the
people sitting at the tables are adults capable of taking care of
children and, one likes to hope, themselves.

there are different beer gardens, just as there are different
playgrounds, and one garden (gated, no dogs allowed, smoking sometimes
frowned on when seated at tables nearest the play area) caters to
younger children. we upgraded to the big kid garden year before last,
where the tables are slightly farther from the play area, where there’s
more room to run around and where there are even more people who aren’t
parents there. the kids sometimes have to divert games around adults
playing petanque. some adults are rowdy. we call this "living in a
city" and i recommend that people who can’t handle adult rowdiness in a
public area avoid public areas.

in the 10 years i’ve been going to beer gardens, and it has been a
near-daily summer thing, i have seen actively bad parenting three
times. two of those times, the parent was corrected by another patron.
one of them, the family was asked to leave. so there is a collective
kind of behavior here, there is a willingness to judge, there is social
criticism and even public shaming for bad behavior.

it’s just that there’s not this pre-emptive strike, this someone might
be stupid someday so we’ll assume you’re all stupid right now. there’s
a willingness to assume you know how to take care of yourself. which,
given the option, i’d prefer to have the assumption be that i am, in
fact, not an idiot. i have all the czech grandmas taking care of that
for me, what with the way i let Squire Tuck run around nearly naked (coat with
liner, pants, boots, hat… but no gloves! he’ll FREEZE!) and the
horrific fact that i don’t bake cookies. but in a group of people my
approximate age, the idea of defending my right to be an adult and have a child at
the same time? no. thank you.